Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a fun, buoyant adventure following the tale of Arthur Dent as he narrowly escapes the earth’s destruction in the wake of a new space super-highway being built in its place, hitching a ride with interstellar researcher Ford Prefect aboard the ship of the very alien bureaucrats whom destroyed his planet. From here unfolds the winding and absurdly improbable tale which will take the sole survivor of earth’s destruction from the one side of the galaxy to the end of the universe, stopping along at every time and space in-between.
Light-hearted is probably one of the best ways to describe the main body of the story. The story-line continuously tries to keep a reader’s curiosity, making him wonder what mysteries lies ahead and how humorous can this book get. I consider myself as a newbie in Sci-fi as I am not “that” well-read in this specific genre but after reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I feel that this is a great book to introduce oneself with the Sci-fi genre. The book is humorous and has a pace on which it never gets boring. There are many funny and witty ideas in the book that Adams represent in his words like imagining the Earth as a big computer designed to answer The Ultimate Question on Life, Universe and Everything with the Ultimate Answer as 42.
The plot isn’t much big but the book leaves a reader in curious state to continue reading the next books in the particular series.
View all my reviews on Goodreads.com
I recently read and posted on this book. For me, it was more parody and satire than sci-fi. If you are intersted in checking out sci-fi as a literary genre, i would recommend starting with either Dune or Stranger in a Strange Land. Both excellent books. Cheers, and thanks for your post 🙂
Thanks I’ll check the titles you mentioned! 🙂
I read this years ago and loved it and I consider it a comedy as well. I have a tee-shirt from the TV show when it was on PBS.
WOW! A Tee-Shirt.. Cool. Good to know 🙂
Sorry for this, delete this comment if you like, but I was looking at your blog and I noticed that your people widget is titled ‘Mi Amigos’, when the proper grammar would be ‘Mis Amigos’ seeing as the noun is plural. If I am wrong and that was not Spanish, if it was a joke, or if you are offended by this, I’m super sorry.
I appreciate you for correcting me. You don’t need to apologise and don’t worry, I’m not offended. You see, my Spanish is poor 🙂
Oh, good!!!!! 😀 Thanks and you’re welcome!!!! 😉
Loved that book. I don’t read Sci-fi in general, except Dune and a few others, but this one I consider to be more of a comedy. I love the movie as well.
The movie is hilarious!! 🙂
Ah it’s always nice to read reviews of your favourite books! 😀
Yeah, #1 doesn’t have much of a plot at all (wait til you get to #3) but the punchline at the end about Marvin and the ship…XD
I read the third recently, yeah.. that last part! 😀 Have you read 4th ad 5th?
One of my all-time favorite novels!
I’m also a Sci-Fi newbie and was told to read Dune, and I did. I would recommend it too, but it can be a bit daunting with all the new vocabulary. I would also recommend Solaris, which is a quick read and very well-written. I don’t recommend watching the movie first since the descriptions in the book are incredible—really stunning—and the movie might ruin your chance of getting to imagine things from scratch.
Right now I’m working on Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. I happen to love this last one, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. There are lots of references to philosophers and it’s a sort of puzzle trying to figure out what things mean. I’m having a great time with it.
Still haven’t read Hitchhikers though! I might even have it on the bookshelves…I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for the reminder!
Thank you. I will definitely check Solaris… 🙂
When I first read Hitchhiker’s Guide, I was actually too young for it and didn’t really like it. Luckily I gave it another shot several years later and loved every minute of it! I read all five of them. The first four were all fantastic, but the final one wasn’t nearly as good. It felt like Adams was just finished with it and wanted the series over forever.
I haven’t read the last two but I’m in awe of them.
This series is one of my favorites. Eoin Colfer wrote a follow-up called “And Another Thing…” but it just isn’t the same quality.
Will see that. Thanks for letting me know!
as you’re a mystery fiction buff — do be sure to check out Adams’ Dirk Gently novels. Not that they’re satires of mystery novels in general, but just a fun take on a PI with a SF/Fantasy bent.
They are in my list from a long time. Thanks for reminding about them. I will definitely 🙂
This book is amazing! I love the entire series a lot.
In fact, last year I tried writing a review for this book which was just like the book- whacky!
Of course I’m no Douglas Adams but I had fun writing it 😀
I haven’t read the entire series, just the first three and yes they are good. 🙂
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